Debriefing the 2016 J/70 Worlds with Winning Skipper Joel Ronning
by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 5 Oct 2016
GSheridan Awards – Alcatel J/70 Worlds at St. Francis Yacht Club Alcatel J/70 Worlds
Since its inception in 2012, the J/70 has proven itself to be the most popular One Design boat in decades, with more than 1,100 boats sailing across the globe. The week of September 27-October 1, 2016 saw the class’ third World Championship regatta contested on the waters of the Berkeley Circle racing area of San Francisco Bay, some seven miles from St. Francis Yacht Club, which hosted this high-level event. Sixty-eight boats from 15 different countries arrived on the Bay keen to determine bragging rights in a fleet that contained a who’s-who list of Category 1 and Category 3 (professional) sailors.
For anyone who has not sailed on the Bay, the breeze during the late-spring through early-autumn months typically fills in from the west around noon and often pipes-up considerably in the afternoon hours. While these breeze-on conditions supply a huge grin factor for spinnaker-flying sailors, they also kick up big, steep square waves when the tide cycle pits ebbing water against incoming airs, as was the case during the 2016 Alcatel J/70 Worlds.
The washboard-like conditions on the Berkeley Circle tested each boat’s heavy-air broach recovery skills, especially on the final runs of the last race of each day, which provided the most opportunity for the breeze to oppose the outgoing water.
After a full 12 races over five days of sailing that saw several leaderboard changes, Joel Ronning and his Catapult (USA 187) team, with John Kostecki (the only sailor to have won the America’s Cup, an Olympic medal and the Volvo Ocean Race) calling tactics, emerged as the 2016 J/70 World Champions. The Catapult crew was joined on the podium by Julian Fernandez Neckelmann’s Flojito y Cooperando crew and Jud Smith’s Africa team. [N.B., if you know Smith, be sure to ask him about the origins of his boat name. Hint: it’s an acronym that has nothing to with one of the planet’s inhabited continents.]
I caught up with Ronning via email a few days after the dust had settled on this world-class event to learn more about the Catapult team’s road to becoming 2016 J/70 World Champions.
What were the biggest keys to your success at the 2016 J/70 Worlds?
We first put together what I consider to be one of the best teams out there. We then spent a tremendous amount of time preparing for the Worlds through sail testing, two-boat sparring and getting our boats to San Francisco in early summer, which allowed us to spend a lot of time on the Bay.
How important was it that you guys also sailed in the Rolex Big Boat Series, as far as gaining knowledge of the Bay and about your closest competitors at the Worlds?
We had also done the two prior regattas, the Pacific Coast Championship and the Keel Boat series as well as the [Rolex] Big Boat [Series], and this allowed us to see how we were really going against some of the best in the fleet. These regattas also gave the team a higher level comfort in handling the J/70 in the high winds, waves and tides of San Francisco Bay.
The U-Flag and the Black Flag both played big roles in the Race Committee’s starting-line plans, given the big ebb tide. How much of a deficit was it to get a UFD-69 in Race 3?
We certainly paid attention to the prospect of another penalty after that, we had thought we were conservative enough in that start but obviously we weren’t. It could have destroyed our confidence had we let it get to us, but the team is seasoned enough to know that there was still a lot of racing after Race 3. We did end having [some] very cautious starts after that, but the risk-reward [ratio] just wasn’t there for starting aggressively.
Does the Catapult crew have a preferred set of conditions, or do you consider your yourselves to be all-grounders?
I think we are all around capable, but I know our favorite conditions were what we saw in San Francisco. We love planning in 20+ knots and the challenge of keeping it together upwind in those winds and the waves. What an amazing sailing venue.
How would you describe the racing conditions on the Berkeley Circle? Also, how was that long beat back to the St. Francis after a long day of sailing?
The Berkeley Circle is not quite as extreme as racing along the city front of San Francisco, but it is still pretty tricky. The tide patterns changed significantly throughout the day, which drove a lot of discussion on the boat. There is a fair amount of influence from Angel Island in both tide and wind direction, and I thought that was fun because it was a bit of a puzzle to me. Fortunately John [Kostecki] is super experienced in these waters and was excellent in his calls.
Can you tell me a bit about the special roll bar that you added to your cockpit, as well as the pre-racing protest over this bar that you won? Also, did this protest help shape any on-the-water rivalries?
I have a prosthetic lower leg and have sometimes found [onboard] maneuvers a little challenging. The class rules allow for a modification to help deal with these situations and we carefully followed them. We applied for and got authorization from the class technical committee and documented our request and their response.
The entire crew was dumfounded by the protest, it seemed very unsportsmanlike. None of us are a fan of winning in the protest room. I did not feel different about competing afterward than I did when we showed up. We were there with a goal of winning, we prepared with that goal in mind, and I think all of us on Catapult felt very ready for the races and ready to beat the prior world champs.
[Ed Note: Ronning and his crew were protested prior to the start of the 2016 Alcatel J/70 Worlds by Julian Fernandez Neckelmann, owner/driver of Flojito y Cooperando, who took second-place at the 2016 J/70 Worlds, and who won the title in 2015. Needless to say, Neckelmann lost this protest.]
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